Synopses & Reviews
In the summer of 1922, Ezra Pound viewed the church of San Francesco in Rimini, Italy, for the first time. Commonly known as the Tempio Malatestiano, the edifice captured his imagination for the rest of his life. Lawrence S. Rainey here recounts an obsession that links together the whole of Pound's poetic career and thought.
Written by Pound in the months following his first visit, the four poems grouped as "The Malatesta Cantos" celebrate the church and the man who sponsored its construction, Sigismondo Malatesta. Upon receiving news of the building's devastation by Allied bombings in 1944, Pound wrote two more cantos that invoked the event as a rallying point for the revival of fascist Italy. These "forbidden" cantos were excluded from collected editions of his works until 1987. Pound even announced an abortive plan in 1958 to build a temple inspired by the church, and in 1963, at the age of eighty, he returned to Rimini to visit the Tempio Malatestiano one last, haunting time.
Drawing from hundreds of unpublished materials, Rainey explores the intellectual heritage that surrounded the church, Pound's relation to it, and the interpretation of his work by modern critics. The Malatesta Cantos, which have been called "one of the decisive turning-points in modern poetics" and "the most dramatic moment in The Cantos," here engender an intricate allegory of Pound's entire career, the central impulses of literary modernism, the growth of intellectual fascism, and the failure of critical culture in the twentieth century. Included are two-color illustrations from the 1925 edition of Pound's cantos and numerous black-and-white photographs.
Review
"Narrowly focusing his attention on Pound's writing between 1922 and 1925, Rainey offers a microscopic inspection of the Malatesta Cantos in the context of manuscript and historical documentation. He argues that these Cantos are the turning point in Pound's career and in the history of modernism. From his scrupulous examination of these works as a cultural matrix, Rainey makes grand claims about 20th-century literature, criticism, and politics, uneasily situating this book between imperious declaration and miniscule detail." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
In the summer of 1922, Ezra Pound viewed the church of San Francesco in Rimini, Italy, for the first time. Commonly known as the Tempio Malatestiano, the edifice captured his imagination for the rest of his life. Lawrence S. Rainey here recounts an obsession that links together the whole of Pound's poetic career and thought.
Written by Pound in the months following his first visit, the four poems grouped as "The Malatesta Cantos" celebrate the church and the man who sponsored its construction, Sigismondo Malatesta. Upon receiving news of the building's devastation by Allied bombings in 1944, Pound wrote two more cantos that invoked the event as a rallying point for the revival of fascist Italy. These "forbidden" cantos were excluded from collected editions of his works until 1987. Pound even announced an abortive plan in 1958 to build a temple inspired by the church, and in 1963, at the age of eighty, he returned to Rimini to visit the Tempio Malatestiano one last, haunting time.
Drawing from hundreds of unpublished materials, Rainey explores the intellectual heritage that surrounded the church, Pound's relation to it, and the interpretation of his work by modern critics. The Malatesta Cantos, which have been called "one of the decisive turning-points in modern poetics" and "the most dramatic moment in The Cantos," here engender an intricate allegory of Pound's entire career, the central impulses of literary modernism, the growth of intellectual fascism, and the failure of critical culture in the twentieth century. Included are two-color illustrations from the 1925 edition of Pound's cantos and numerous black-and-white photographs.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-339) and index.
About the Author
Lawrence S. Rainey is assistant professor of English at Yale University.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Production
Ezra Pound in the Temple of History: Earliest Drafts and the Rites of Quotation
A Discrepancy
The Past
The Future
Conjunctions
Roots and Routes
The Politics of Quotation
2. Transmission
Savage Crimes: (F)Acts of Transmission
A Life and a Death
Murderous Meanings
Strange Shadows on You Tend
The Whited Sepulchre
3. Reception
Desperate Love: Isotta and the Monument of Civilization
The Honor of Italy
Worthy of This Love
A Little Chronicle
Lyrical Center
The Missing Letter: Why?
The Last Judgment
Coda
Appendixes
1. The Chronology of the Manuscripts
2. Pound's Travels in Italy, 1922
3. The Principal Source for Canto 73
Notes
Index